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Rihanna has criticised photo-messaging app Snapchat for an advertisement which joked about the violent treatment the pop star suffered at the hands of her former boyfriend, singer Chris Brown.

Running under the heading "impossible choices", the advert asked viewers "would you rather [...] slap Rihanna" or "punch Chris Brown". Brown was served with a restraining order in 2009, after pleading guilty to assaulting the singer. According to a police report, Brown punched Rihanna multiple times, put her in a headlock until she started to lose consciousness, and threatened to kill her.

"Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain't my fav app out there!", Rihanna wrote in a statement. "But I'm just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess! I'd love to call it ignorance, but I know you ain't that dumb! You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV [domestic violence] victims and made a joke of it!!!

"This isn't about my personal feelings, cause I don't have much of them," the statement, shared on social media by Huffington Post writer Gennette Cordova, continued. "but all the women, children and men that have been victims of DV in the past and especially the ones who haven't made it out yet... you let us down! Shame on you. Throw the whole app-oligy away."

In a statement given to the BBC earlier this week, Snapchat apologised for the advert. "The advert was reviewed and approved in error, as it violates our advertising guidelines. We immediately removed the ad last weekend, once we became aware. We are sorry that this happened."

The ad was for a mobile video game called Would You Rather which is unaffiliated with Snapchat. In a new statement released today the company said: "This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service. We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process. We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again."